I have been completely blown away both by the SFLEG summer camp and my time in China more generally. Often you don’t realise an experience is life-changing until after the fact, looking back and reflecting on the past. The SFLEG programme was not one of these experiences; rather, time and time again I was confronted with the awareness that my life was being shaped then and there, its trajectory re-routing, the very fibres of my person changing.

Fittingly, my lessons were all about change. I had the pleasure of teaching alongside my fellow Pembroke Classicist Gabriel; our focus was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a hugely influential collection of poems linked by the theme of transformation. To begin with, we introduced the students to Roman culture more broadly. We then encouraged the students to think about examples of real-life change, such as seasonal or personal, before presenting them with more fantastical instances of transformation in five stories that we had selected from the Metamorphoses. The storytelling element of teaching posed a bigger challenge than we had anticipated; the language barrier was a real difficulty at times, and children who were confused were initially too shy to tell us they were confused!! However, after much patience, many late nights at the hotel replanning our lessons, and countless games of Hangman, we watched with delight as the children got to grips with the stories and were even able to engage with the complex ethical and philosophical issues at the heart of them. Each day, the children had the opportunity to produce their own interpretations of these stories using different media; from moving poems from the perspective of Echo pining after Narcissus, to theatrical masks capturing Ariadne’s moment of transformation, one half human flesh, the other a spider’s body, to a full-size Roman toga complete wih Icarus’ wax wings. Gabriel and I were amazed by the creativity of the children, and their showcase at the end of the week completely blew us away; tears welled up to watch the children present their work with so much pride, many of them eager to take their paintings and poems home to show to their families.

It was the initial challenge of the language barrier that, I think, made the experience just so rewarding. I only spent five days with the children in my classes, but I was astounded at how quickly their English ability improved. One boy in particular stands out to me. On the first few days, he and I were utterly unable to communicate; it pained me to see how frustrated he was with his inability to convey his questions and thoughts, leaving him puzzled in my classes. However, by taking the time to figure out a means of communication (often involving hand-drawn pictures), and more importantly by actually getting to know the boy, by the end of the week he had gained the confidence and language ability to express seriously impressive concepts. Other children who were at first too shy to even look me in the eye came bounding up to me with a grin on the last day, genuinely eager to learn. These were the moments that made the experience so special, these moments of… oh… this is why people teach. Before the SFLEG summer camp, I had had no teaching experience; as soon as I arrived home, I opened my laptop and started researching similar schemes. I have certainly caught the bug from my SFLEG experience – both for teaching and for travel more broadly.

This spark for travel was no doubt fed by the activities organised for us by SFLEG. While we were in Shijiazhuang, our wonderful hosts Jack and Jamal took us on all sorts of adventures; though it was later eclipsed in scale and majesty by the Forbidden City and Summer Palace in Beijing, the impression made by Longxing Temple, as my first encounter with an ancient Buddhist monastery, will remain with me forever. I saw things I could never imagine, did things I would never dream of; scrambling up the Great Wall as it disappears up into the clouds; relaxing after a day’s teaching in a hot spring surrounded by mountains and cicada song and enormous dragonflies; descending into a cavern in the depths of Baodu Mountain, where five hundred uniquely carved Arhats gazed back at me. But for all the new and wonderful sights, I was struck above all by the sense of familiarity, by just how at home I felt. The pines in Beijing took me back to the Scottish hills of my girlhood. I would reach over the table to pass the teapot at a local restaurant and found myself in Granny Sue’s dining room; I may have been eating black ear fungus and fishy aubergine instead of toast and scrambled eggs, jostling with chopsticks and pointing at laminated photographs on menus entirely in Chinese, but, grinning across the table at people I felt I had known forever, as the tea and conversation made its rounds, I was back home.

Of course, this was largely thanks to the generosity and warmth of the people who organised the trip: Jinduo, who met us, frazzled and jet-lagged, at Beijing Airport and shepherded us all the way to Shijiazhuang; Jack and Jamal, who, officially our tour guides, by the end of the trip felt like friends; our host family, who treated us with the utmost hospitality, and (mostly) concealed their laughter at our appalling attempts to make dumplings. In fact, everyone I encountered in China, no matter the language barrier, displayed such friendliness and generosity that it was hard not to feel at home.

I have said that this experience changed my life, changed who I am. But, as I am writing, I am beginning to think that change isn’t even the right word. In Classics, many stories are about a nostos: a homecoming or return after a journey. My time in China felt like a nostos, a return to myself. Five thousand miles from Britain, seven hours ahead, somehow I felt more me than ever.

If you asked somebody to describe the Jaimie of a few years ago, fresh out of sixth form, they would describe a quiet, sensible girl, afraid of the world, afraid of stepping one toe out of line, afraid, above all, of making mistakes. But as I encouraged the children in the summer camp to push themselves out of their comfort zone and dare to get things wrong, I found myself doing the same. Timid Jaimie, volunteering to give a speech at the opening ceremony of the summer camp. Camera-shy Jaimie, grinning like a little kid for Gabriel’s digicam. Serious, uptight Jaimie, performing karaoke, stone-cold-sober, in the middle of an ancient town, with people I had known for mere days, laughing until my face hurt. I, the self-proclaimed germaphobe, find myself missing the squatty loos and the street food. Perhaps it is being away from ‘normalcy’ that is so freeing, perhaps this is precisely why travel is so important – in any case, I feel that I have found a little piece of myself in China that I didn’t know I was missing. I am beyond grateful to have had this opportunity, and to have spent my time with such a delightful group of human beings: Jinduo, Jack and Jamal; the wonderful children of the Shijiazhuang Foreign Language School who, I am sure, have shining futures ahead of them; and above all Gabriel, Louise and Alice. I lack the words to capture how special they are, and how special they have made this trip for me, but I believe I have found lifelong friends in them. I am already dreaming of my next trip to China, whenever that may be, and I urge anyone who is considering this opportunity to apply.